November 9, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
the far side and the spreading of them out for action 
when they had reached the far sid-J ? The force just 
across would be under the worst conditions of a dehle 
and of a dehle pecuharly vulnerable. ; The; enemy's 
superiority in heavy artillery permits him to concentrate 
a crushing force from long range upon one comparatively 
short sector, but does not permit him to destroy at 
will weaker pieces properly concealed and mobile on a 
much wider arc. And the bridge would be at the 
mercy of these. 
It would also, unless a complete command of the 
river could be established (which so far has not been 
the case), be in perpetual peril from the water. For one 
cannot imagine a concentration of artillery in this one held 
alone such as would secure complete safety from such 
attacks. These conditions of dehle would continue not 
only upon the bridge itself, but in the bank of land beyond 
to the north, and when the moment came for deployment 
that deployment would have to be undertaken under 
conditions where the superiority in heavy artillery had 
nothing like the weight it had for the mere establishment 
of a bridgehead. For a much larger sector would now 
have to be covered and a sector increasing as the deploy- 
ment proceeded. There are no good positions for obser- 
vation of such an effort upon the northern bank of the 
river. You do not find, therefore, the conditions you 
have in a moimtain pass, where deployment upon the 
plain, after the pass has been carried, is aided under 
modern conditions by observation from the last foothills. 
The number of men rendered useless at any moment 
by the fact that they were in column passing the defile, 
bridge and the bank of land beyond, or packed ready 
for that movement on the further side of the river, is 
another adverse consideration. 
The enemy's difficulty is men. Though he has superiority > 
in machines his trouble for numbers will, as he knows, 
continue to increase, and the crossing with such large 
numbers out of action through the length of the defile 
could only be supported, at its head, with a very small 
balance of troops. Altogether, then, the experiment 
of forcing a Danube passage is a doubtful one. Upon 
the whole, I think the military opinion of Europe rather 
inclines to its being attempted than not — though such 
judgments are necessarily guesswork. No one would 
deny, least of all, I, should imagine, the enemy himself, 
that the odds are against success if it be attempted. 
What of the second main offensive operation, the 
enemy's action against the Carpathian border ? 
The main characteristic — which is also the main 
necessary limitation — of this Austro-German effort against 
the Roumanian western border is sometimes not fully 
grasped. 
Tt is not an effort to get through at some one of nine • 
m*n gates and six smaller ones. It cannot be com- 
pared, for instance, to the pressure of water upon, a 
dyke, which, if it succeeds in getting through at any 
point, has succeeded altogether. To force someone only 
of the passes, even that nearest Bucharest, while the rest 
remained firmly held by the Roumanians, would be 
perfectly useless to the enemy for the purpose of an 
advance. An advance under such conditions would 
mean unprotected flanks, unprotected communications 
(of nearly a week's march in extent) and alarge concen- 
tration of guns and supplies against the permanent 
works of Bucharest, a concentration dependent upon 
such very perilous Unas behind it ! Armies do not act in 
that fashion. 
On the other hand, it is an error to assert, as has been 
done in some quarters, that the enemy does not achieve 
his object unless he forces all the passes. The truth is 
between the two. He achieves his object, that is, under- 
takes an invasion of Roumania in force, if he seizes a 
sufficiently broad belt of the frontier to make his advance , 
secure from attack upon the flanks. For instance, if h^' 
were unable to force the passes upon the northern secteir. 
of the frontier, but could master all those upon the 
southern, he could then advance upon a sufficiently broad 
front across the Roumanian Plain and secure his right 
Hank upon the Danube ;' his left Hank upon the moun-' 
tains. Such an ()perati(jn would be called " holding upoit^'- 
the left of his line and manceuvring by his rit;ht," and that'^ 
IS exactly what Falkenhayn is at "the present moment i 
attempting to do. 
Falkenhayn's main effort (excludins the .preliminary 
successful battles at the beginning" of his concentration 
when he cleared Transylvania) — Falkenhayn's main 
effort at invasion proper has lasted now just five weeks 
and the period may roughly be divided into two nearly 
equal halves. During the first period the manoeuvre 
was to hold upon his right and pivot upon his left with 
the object of forcing the Northern Passes and thus cutting 
the communications between the Russians and the 
Roumanians. The second was a change of plan : holding 
upon his left to manteuvre upon his right ; that is, 
holding the Northern Passes and attempting to force 
the southern ones. 
In the first of these plans he failed. The second is 
still proceeding. He is for the moment holding upon the 
northern sector and doing what he^can to force an advance 
upon the south. 
In that attempt to force an advance upon the south, 
that is, through the passes nearest Bucharest and west- 
ward as far as the Vulcan Pass, we note three phases of 
operation. 
There is first the main effort across the Predeal Pass 
and its twin the Torzburg. These are the two passes 
that lead out from Brasso or Kronstadt. In the first of 
these the enemy have a railway. In the next they have 
a road only. Upon both they have gone some five to 
six miles past the crest of the mountains, reaching in 
the first beyond Predeal and in the second to within a 
day's march of the railhead at Campulung. A general, 
operation here is, if successful, more fruitful than else- 
where, not only because these passes are the nearest 
to the capital, but also because the nearest flanking 
pass to the west, the Red Tower Gorge, is 50 miles 
away without any direct communication by road 
or by railway. The next pass open to the west 
beyond the Red Tower Gorge, the Vulcan Pass, comes 
after an even longer interval. This great distance of 
the next nearest Roumanian forces and this absence of 
communication between them and the two Brasso passes 
(the Predeal and the Torzburg) mean that if the 
enemy should push right down to the plain from the 
Predeal and Torzburg Passes his exposed right flank 
would be secure for a longer time than would other- 
wise be the case. Suppose he were to get right down to 
the plain, seizing as he went the railhead at Campulung, 
he would, upon the map, have his right flank entirely 
exposed, but as there are no direct communications 
with the next pass, the Red Tower Gorge 50 miles 
away, he could hold these for some days without fear 
of an attack from the Roumanians from the direction of 
the Red Tower Gorge, and meanwhile begin to exercise 
new pressure upon the Red Tower Gorge immediately 
afterwards. 
An advance right through the Predeal and the Torz- 
burg Passes to begin with is the most practical plan for 
the enemy to adopt, and it is the plan he has adopted after 
the defeat of his attempt to master the Northern Passes 
and to cut the communications with Russia. But how- 
ever successful in the Predeal and Torzburg he cannot 
act from them alone, and the menace of invasion only 
becomes serious when we hear that he has also mastered 
the Red Tower in its entirety and even the Vulcan. 
It is here that the comparison of numerical strength 
upon this front comes in. A superiority of munition- 
ment, and of numbers of heavy pieces and of their calibre, 
the enemy has unfortunately for certainty. It is this 
superiority \vhich enables him to advance where he does. 
But the question of whether you can compel a distant 
force upon your flank to retire, or whether upon the 
contrary it will menace you ; the question of which of 
the two forces manoeuvring one against the other shall 
be the enveloping force is almost entirely a question of 
numbers. This should be clear from the most elementary 
consideration of such a situation. If I, coming with a force 
of ten men in line against six men in line succeed in forcing 
back the .six, the fact that I have against me another 
man making a seventh some distance off upon my right 
does not trouble me. I have enough men to spare out of 
myten to make a sort of subsidiary front upon that flank 
and deal with any attempt of that isolated man to strike 
tti^ferf'my flank. In practice, so far from his attempting 
any such thing he would quite certainly make it his 
business toYejoin his six colleagues and add his strength 
to their direct resistance against my ten. But if from 
any local tactical superiority such as superiority in heavy 
